Birdmen

Starred review from January 20, 2014
Goldstone (Lefty: An American Odyssey) delivers a riveting narrative about the pioneering era of aeronautics in America and beyond, centering on the intense rivalry between Wilbur and Orville Wright and Glenn Hammond Curtiss. At the dawn of the 20th century, while the Wrights were experimenting with flight at Kitty Hawk, Curtiss was designing engines and motorcycles in upstate New York. The controversial meeting of these competing tinkerers, at the Dayton Fair in 1906, spawned years of legal wrangling during the course of bitter patent wars. Meanwhile, excited masses packed the grandstands to witness the world’s newest sport wherein “spectacle coexisted with death.” According to Goldstone, the implacable animus of the Wrights towards Curtiss persists to this day as a proxy feud, since “historians of early flight tend to deify one and demonize the other.” Goldstone also profiles a slew of early aviators, including masterful daredevil Lincoln Beachey and powered flight’s first of many fatalities, U.S. Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge. This is a well-written, thoroughly researched work that is sure to compel readers interested in history, aviation, and invention. Goldstone raises questions of enduring importance regarding innovation and the indefinite exertion of control over ideas that go public. Photos. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management.

March 15, 2014
At the dawn of powered flight, the warfare for the air was as intense, if not as sanguinary, as war in the air would one day become. Goldstone--author or co-author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction titles (Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1965-1903, 2010, etc.)--returns with a story little known to those unversed in aviation history: the battle Orville and Wilbur Wright fought with Glenn Curtiss to dominate the aviation market in the early years of the 20th century. Both would win and lose. After a brief prologue, Goldstone returns to the early theories and attempts at manned flight--Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo have cameos. The author then leaps to the late 19th century, then swiftly to Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers would achieve their immortality in 1903. He takes us through their design innovations and their false starts and hopes, and despite his patent admiration for the brothers, Goldstone also describes a surprising intransigence and even truculence in them. He then shifts focus to Curtiss (and ping-pongs back and forth between his two subjects the rest of the way), who was a brilliant designer, as well. The author describes the controversy between his two principals: Early in their relationship, a relationship that moved from amicable to hostile, did Curtiss steal ideas? The author then glides above history, directing our attention to the phenomenon of the air show, aerial competitions, the innovations in design, the crashes, the deaths and the slow emergence of women aviators. He also describes the grotesque determination of spectators to retrieve pieces of wreckage, even moments after a fatal crash. The Wright brothers became embroiled in countless lawsuits with Curtiss and others as history inevitably flew away from them. A powerful story that contrasts soaring hopes with the anchors of ego and courtroom.

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Starred review from January 1, 2014

Goldstone (Lefty: An American Odyssey) offers a fresh take on the Wright Brothers by treating them as the two individuals they were, men who frantically sought indefinite control of their patented findings in order both to quash the aeronautical contributions of chief rival Glenn Curtiss and to maximize their company's earnings. To be sure, the former goal was bound to fail over time, but the latter one was so destructive to the dawn of aviation and to themselves that, per Orville, it contributed to Wilbur's premature death. Goldstone posits that "in pursuing damages over technology, the Wrights had rendered themselves anachronisms." His narrative is replete with the era's aviation events and its oversize characters, e.g., the competition with Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association; the painful break between Wilbur and his erstwhile mentor, Octave Chanute; the renowned exhibition flyer Lincoln Beachey, who mastered the inside loop and inverted flight; the appalling lethality of the Wright-Curtis air shows; and Thomas Scott Baldwin, misguided proponent of lighter-than-air (balloon) flight. VERDICT A superbly crafted retelling of a story familiar to aviation buffs, here greatly strengthened by fresh perspectives, rigorous analyses, comprehensible science, and a driving narrative. Recommended for aviation scholars and enthusiasts, period historians, and leisure readers in nonfiction.--John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Cleveland

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2013
Wilbur and Orville Wright expected much more than fame after they flew across the sands at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Having successfully flown and filed a broadly worded patent for a wing and rudder design, they expected royalties to be paid to them for every aircraft built by rivals. Believing they owned the concept of flight, they also demanded licensing fees for every barnstorming flight and a cut from the profits of every public air show. Glenn Curtiss and other proud air pioneers scoffed at the brothers' claim, arguing they had all had a hand in achieving flight. In Birdmen, historian and novelist Goldstone recounts years of legal wrangling that slowed Americans using aircraft for commerce, transportation, and defense until the start of WWI. The author also chronicles a four-year period in which 142 barnstorming pilots died and swarming spectators picked their broken bodies and aircraft for souvenirs. This period history presents ample biographical details for readers who enjoy rivalries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2014
In 1903, the long-held dream of powered human aviation was finally fulfilled by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, NC. But the Wrights, whom Goldstone ("Inherently Unequal") takes pains to portray as distinct and complementary personalities, were obsessively litigious and more intent on defending their patents than continuing to pioneer, demanding licensing fees from any other aircraft maker or exhibition flyer. When Glen Curtiss, a former motorcycle racer and consummate tinkerer and engine maker, began producing airplanes of superior design, he became the foremost target of the Wrights' ire and the primary defendant in a protracted patent dispute. It is against this backdrop of legal wrangling that Goldstone recounts that extraordinary decade of aeronautical innovation and competition during which aviation moved from experiment to spectacle to commercial enterprise. Narrator Jonathan Fried does a clear and lively job, never getting bogged down in the occasional technical descriptions. VERDICT This is an absorbing, well-written history rich in fascinating personalities. Recommend to anyone interested in American aeronautics. ["A superbly crafted retelling of a story familiar to aviation buffs, here greatly strengthened by fresh perspectives, rigorous analyses, comprehensible science, and a driving narrative," read the starred review of the Ballantine hc, "LJ" 1/14.]--Forrest Link, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing Twp.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.